Category: Facing The Future

Elements of science fiction, fact, science, and other things that inspire geeks, who are crafting the future as we speak (so to say).

Reflecting on 2017 and considering 2018

Carl Setzer

​It’s been a mixed year for me. I started a new job, one that pushed me far outside my comfort zone. As a rather cautious soul, that’s been quite challenging at times to deal with. The frustration of too much to do with constrained time. 

I did get to recapture AutoCAD knowledge, then grow and expand that knowledge. I’m looking to continue this growth. 

Another frustrating element for me: learning a new job. It’s one thing to expand my knowledge, quite another to learn a new role, where a company depends upon my effectiveness. It’s a rather terrifying sensation. Permitting, working with consultants, governmental representatives and departments had presented a deeper challenge. These organizations often are opaque and arcane. Learning their rules and needs requires delving into Byzantine regulations, laws and opinions. It’s often been murky and confusing. My project management skill set has been helpful. Actually, critical. 

More positively, I’ve grown as a martial artist, and my family has done some great stuff. I’ve deepened friendships I valued, and grown to new ones. I’ve also spent the past few weeks studying myself, seeking to deepen my understanding of what brings me joy, what brings me success. 

There’s great emotional risk in this research. What if my self-concept, ideas I’ve invested so much energy on, turn out to be bad fits? I realize my internal counterpoint needs to be “why would I want  to invest time, emotion and energy into something that robs joy and beauty from my life?” But overcoming negative self-talk scripts is challenging.

So, exploring, growing, developing: that’s my theme right now. What about you? What were your favorite parts of 2017? What challenges will you be facing in 2018? 

More Thoughts About “Sustainability”

Carl Setzer

Is this the right word?

This “sustainability?

Or symbiosis?

Healing our environment from millennia of destruction requires a new mindset. “Sustainability” gets bantered about a great deal. It points to a goal: creating a life that minimizes, or, better yet, eliminates environmental damage. Though the word gets used a great deal, especially by marketers, we aren’t living sustainability. There are, perhaps, a few elements of our economy that could be considered sustainable, if you bend reality enough.

We need to consider how we interact with our ecology and the ecosystem writ large. How do we build up the environment, or, invest in our environment ensuring the healthiest system for us to survive on.

Westerners in particular have developed a disconnect from the ecosystem from which we draw life. It’s time to think about what we GIVE to that which provides us life. Only taking eventually fails, whether it’s large scale biological systems, or just a group of friends in the neighborhood pub.

With that, I am not convinced that “sustainability” inspires the right vision. Lately I’m leaning towards “symbiosis”. Like the picture above, there’s an exchange between the entities. Something given for something taken. When the loop is big enough, we have a cradle-to-cradle system. Which is when we finally have a system that won’t fail. That is my objective.